Lanceheim (5 page)

K
leine Wallanlagen was not the largest park in Mollisan Town, nor was it the smallest. Around a hill that was considered a mountain by Lanceheim loyalists, the city had laid out a gravel path. Lanterns were lit along it throughout the night, but still most avoided going into Kleine Wallanlagen when darkness fell. It was long ago that there was justification for the rumors of drug dealing and prostitution, but the gravel path was edged by dense bushes and ancient oaks, and the many hiding places contributed to fantasies.

Reuben Walrus stood hidden in the dark shadow of one of these mighty trees. Peering toward the building facades on the other side of pepper red Mooshütter Weg, he took a gulp of cognac that he had poured into a steel pocket flask. He had the flask in his inside pocket, while he carried the bottle of cognac in his coat pocket; drinking straight from the bottle was, despite everything, unthinkable. He was not used to drinking, and was already thoroughly intoxicated. The night had just passed its climax; the darkness was compact, and the chill penetrated right through the walrus's shiny fabric. This did not bother him. He was directing all
of his concentration toward the windows on the third story of the building opposite, and he saw clearly how the two animals inside were preparing for departure. The female stood impatiently by the door while the male ran back and forth through the rooms, perhaps in pursuit of belongings, but just as likely on the lookout for excuses to stay behind.

Reuben bided his time. If he had waited this long, he could wait a little longer. He emptied the flask of alcohol and poured in more from the bottle. It became more and more difficult to hit the little opening, but it made less and less difference if he spilled. In the corner of his eye he saw how the entryway opposite opened and closed. He waited until the sound of the strange male's hooves were no longer heard on the sidewalk, sneaked out of the park, and slipped quickly and soundlessly across the street. He punched in the code expertly and opened the door to the stairwell without turning on the lights. In the darkness he fumbled his way up the two flights of stairs and fell three times before he was standing outside her door.

He had a key. She didn't know, Fox von Duisburg, that someone else had the key to her home. Reuben chuckled to himself and unlocked.

Inside in the dark hallway he remained standing, suddenly doubtful. Was this really a good idea? He tried to think about it, create a little distance between himself and the situation, but the cognac allowed no such thing. Instead he tittered at something he forgot at once, and then the ceiling light in the hall came on.

“You!” exclaimed Fox von Duisburg.

She was wearing a thin red dressing gown over her silk pajamas, holding a baseball bat in her paw, and staring at him.

The unexpected light made him jump. He was frightened when he saw the raised weapon, yet he could not control himself. Fox's face transformed his tittering into a bubbling,
deeper and deeper laugh. Although he knew he shouldn't, he found he could not put a stop to it.

“You're drunk,” he heard Fox von Duisburg declare with a certain surprise.

He neither could nor wanted to deny this. He held his stomach and fell forward in new spasms of laughter, so that he was transformed into a panting pile of fabric on the floor in her hallway.

This had at one time been his hallway.

“Old boy,” said Fox, crouching down to raise one of his fins and place it around her neck. “Help out now.”

And then she pulled him up from the floor and dragged him into the living room. When she dropped him off on the couch, his laughter had been transformed into shaking sobs. Fox von Duisburg had been married to Reuben Walrus for twelve years, but never before had she seen him cry. For a moment she felt paralyzed, completely empty. It was late at night, and her lover had finally left. Instead of falling asleep in her cozy bed, she found an intoxicated, crushed ex-husband in the hallway, and realized that the night had only begun. With an inaudible sigh she sat down beside him on the couch and placed her arm on his back.

“She gave me three weeks,” snuffled Reuben.

Fox stroked him across the back and asked who he was talking about.

“In three weeks it's over,” he explained.

“What happens in three weeks, darling?” she asked.

“In three weeks I am never going to hear again,” Reuben forced out. “I am never going to compose again. My life is over.”

 

Fox von Duisburg made
coffee for them. Reuben sat at his place at the kitchen table and watched as she stood by the old wood-fired stove that she refused to replace for reasons of nostalgia
and whipped the warm milk foam just stiff enough. The scene was familiar, except for the dense darkness outside the windows. They had been divorced for more than fifteen years, yet he felt secure and domesticated at her breakfast table. The table and stove were both remnants of Fox's childhood. She had lived in this apartment her entire life. From the apartment's perspective, Reuben Walrus was only a temporary resident who stayed longer than he was welcome.

“We never should have moved apart,” said Reuben.

“Do you mean it's been a long time since you had coffee with foamed milk?” answered Fox with a broad smile.

The aromas made him nostalgic: the smell of the wood burning in the little opening, the milk that was warmed in the saucepan, the soft detergent she used when she washed her dressing gown.

“Sure, it's been a long time since I had coffee with foamed milk at three o'clock in the morning,” he admitted.

“It's a good thing we don't live together anymore,” smiled Fox. “I would never manage my days if the nights were like this. Not at our age.”

“If we move in together again, I promise that I will never ask for foamed milk before the Morning Rain at the earliest,” he offered grandly.

“Fantastic,” she said, pouring the milk into the coffee cups. “No suitor could be more romantic than that. When can you move in?”

She set out the cups and sat down across from him at the kitchen table. He smiled, tasting the hot coffee carefully, whereupon the foam stuck to his long mustache. This caused her already tender heart to break, and spontaneously she placed her paw on his fin on the table and patted him.

“Say it like it is, you don't want me to move in at all,” he said.

“You don't want to move in, you only want to hear me say no.”

He shrugged.

“It suits me to pine, it suits you to reject.”

“In your world, perhaps,” said Fox.

“You used to like my world,” Reuben replied.

“I loved your world, oldster. It was the best of worlds. I would recommend it to anyone.”

“That's not what you said to Veronica,” Reuben reminded her.

Fox remembered Veronica, and smiled broadly.

“If you drag your lovers here for the sake of comparisons,” she said, “you can't count on me making it easy for you.”

It had been a strange evening a few years ago. How he had come up with the idea of bringing together his new young female and his ex-wife he did not recall; they reminded him of each other, therefore they ought to meet. It was one of his stupidest ideas. All females paled in the glow of Fox von Duisburg.

He sighed heavily.

“I am never going to love anyone like I loved you,” said Reuben Walrus.

“That's the least I can demand,” replied Fox von Duisburg.

 

The moon was still
half when he managed to convince her to take a walk. Her eyelids had become dangerously heavy the last quarter of an hour, and the idea that she could fall asleep and leave him alone was worse than he could endure. Fresh air and exercise was the medicine.

They walked arm in arm, a single shadow across sidewalks and on facades, wandering this way and that through north Lanceheim. After the divorce he had found a new apartment in this neighborhood, not least to be close to Fox and Josephine. He no longer remembered why they
had separated, he hardly remembered it when he wrote the divorce documents, but he knew that it had been a wise decision. He loved her, perhaps she loved him, but they should each live on their own. Relationships had never been his strong suit; he had a tendency to forget about them even while they were going on, and when he remembered, they were over. He lived for his music, and when it took possession of him…when the harmonies were flowing through him…when the sounds revealed themselves to him and suggested how he should orchestrate them by means of string quartets, brass quintets, or entire orchestras…when the visions intoxicated him, and the joys of the work were in the keys under his sensitive fins…then there was no place for anything else.

Not even for Josephine.

He had not been the best of fathers, but he knew some who were worse. Reuben was forty and some-odd years old when they got Josephine Lamb, and it was too late to conquer the role of dad. He was who he was. Fox never became a mom either; she was her cub's girlfriend right from the start. Had he felt left out, set aside? Was that one of the reasons for the divorce? But he thought that contact with Josephine got better afterward, when he moved down to Knobeldorfstrasse and could devote himself to her when she came to visit. He taught her to play the piano, and he taught her to play the violin. The tuba was her own decision.

“I am never going to hear again,” he said, as a cold breeze came around the block and searched its way into their eyes. “I am never going to know if what I experience inside me is what the orchestra is playing. Never again will I dare put my music in print, because I will never again discover where the mistakes are hiding.”

She did not reply.

“I am never going to…,” he said, but there was nothing more to say.

The wind picked up. After ten meters or so they turned onto gray Friedrichstrasse, an alley so narrow that the wind could hardly find a place there. She stopped, and took hold of the lapel of his coat.

They looked at each other. She was older than he remembered. The fur on the side of her eyes was worn, and her gaze encompassed experience that had not known any detours.

“You can't give up,” she said slowly. “What you are talking about has not yet happened. It hasn't happened. You can't give up.”

He nodded. His wise fox. His strong fox. She released her hold, and they continued in silence back to Mooshütter Weg. The night would soon be over, dawn was on its way, he could see it in the sky, a premonition of daylight along the horizon. He was more or less sober when they were again standing outside her entryway, across from Kleine Wallanlagen. Inside his soul it was black, empty and desolate. The panic from yesterday evening had turned into a sort of apathy.

He would become deaf; he had three weeks' dispensation from Margot Swan, but then it was over. Whether Drexler's syndrome was fatal or not did not interest him; if he could not hear, he could not compose. And if he could not compose, the Chauffeurs might just as well fetch him.

He tried to cheer himself up.

“Thanks for a wonderful night,” he said.

“Yes, I guess we've reached the age where we have to see this as one,” she replied with a smile.

“If I can't take it, I'll come back this evening,” he warned.

“You are welcome.”

She hugged him. But when he turned around to go, she added, “Reuben, forgive me, but that door key you saved—don't you think I should get it back?”

He heard, but ignored her. He'd feel better if he kept it.

O
f Maximilian's first seven years I have very little to relate, because I know little about them. My own life took me into puberty. When I turned fifteen, I was forced for the first time to become acquainted with Mollisan Town in general and Lanceheim in particular, because Weasel, Buzzard, and I started high school. The school in our extra room was transformed into a memory. The city did not allow higher education to be conducted at home.

Leaving the forest was thus not our own decision. On the contrary we were upset, and devoted most of summer vacation to cursing the authorities' lack of imagination. Without a doubt all three of us were terror-stricken. The contempt with which the grown-ups in Das Vorschutz talked about the city had rubbed off on us. Evil, sin, and destructiveness were the result of the artificial life that stuffed animals lived there, and now we too would be subjected to it. It was not strange that we took turns displaying inventiveness and a certain originality as we fantasized endless variations of blowing the Ministry of Education to smithereens.

All three of us were accepted into Lanceheim's Normal
School, which was customary for us Forest Cubs. The school was in Kerkeling Parish, a less attractive area in northeast Lanceheim, not far from Eastern Avenue, which led past the Garbage Dump and King's Cross out to Das Vorschutz. Lanceheim's Normal School was not one of the more sought-after educational institutions, but considering that our grades had been set by our mothers, we could not demand anything better.

On trembling legs we showed up for roll call. I cannot keep from thinking about it with a slight blush of shame. Weasel, Buzzard, and I roved about in the dark corridors of the massive school as if someone had sewn us together. We never left each other's side; we were constantly whispering, using language from the wretched novels for young animals we were forced to read when little: “All these stuffed animals!” “All these classrooms!” “All these sounds, streets, and houses!” For several weeks we continued to talk like that, with exclamation points: “All this stress!” “All these lessons!” “This whole city!” “All this evil, anger, joy, and desire!”

And personally, for me more than for Weasel and Buzzard, “All these beautiful, seductive females!”

The presence of so many new stuffed animals of the opposite gender set my emotional life swinging so that for several years I would walk around in a constant fog, slightly seasick. The opportunities were too many, the longing too great. On an ordinary day I would fall headlong in love with at least one, but more often two, of my classmates, one of my fellow travelers on the bus, or one of all the beauties that I met on Lanceheim's streets and squares. In the evenings I was as exhausted as an empty banana peel, and I had a hard time keeping up with my studies.

 

I did not devote
many thoughts to the strange Maximilian during this period, despite the fact that in secret he executed a magic trick of the greatest distinction.

He got bigger.

Eva Whippoorwill did her best to conceal this disturbing fact, but nonetheless we could all see it. The little bundle that Sven Beaver had found in the forest was not so little anymore. If Maximilian had been tall as a table leg to start with, after seven years he was twice as tall. And as he grew, he changed appearance. This did not happen overnight; it was a subtle, drawn-out process, and among the stuffed animals of the forest, amazement at the phenomenon decreased and increased like ebb and flow. At times there was much talk about the matter, on other occasions less, but one thing stayed the same: we talked only with each other. No one outside Das Vorschutz knew anything about Maximilian; we had the feeling that no good would come of that.

Eva Whippoorwill did her best to protect her son from curious gazes. It was not the case that she hid him—she was far too intelligent for that. On the contrary, this would have led to even more gossip. But she participated sparingly in social gatherings, and she let Maximilian go his own way.

As I have already admitted, I was absorbed in my own emotional life and was far from being as attentive as I should have been. My attitude was like everyone else's: when Maximilian came up in conversation, I experienced a certain discomfort. I did not think the peculiarities that surrounded him were either exciting or interesting. We were already sufficiently vulnerable as it was in Das Vorschutz.

This meant that if Eva Whippoorwill took care to keep her adopted son to herself, we would do our best to avoid him.

 

I do not recall
the reason that I took Maximilian along on a walk. It was not uncommon that I walked by myself in the forest. I had just turned seventeen and was filled with existential torments due to the endless series of more or less
unhappy love affairs that fate—as I called Magnus at that time—had thrown in my path. The forest had always been my refuge; its heavy gloom and tender melancholy suited me fine. On this day someone asked me to take Maximilian along.

True, I was irritated—I specifically remember that—but the irritation quickly went away. The cub was still only seven years old; he had a serious, taciturn disposition, and thus did not disturb my equally lovesick and profound trains of thought.

We took the road toward Heimat, but turned off to the east before we came up to the lake. The air was clear after the Afternoon Rain, and Mother had forced both me and Maximilian to put on clothes that withstood the cool breeze. I recall that we were told that we should be gone for a full hour, but what sort of preparations set this time frame I do not remember. However it was, I went ahead, deeply submerged in brooding. My love on that occasion was named Sarah, and she let me taste her beautiful ears but then pushed aside my paw when it glided down across her cheek.

Maximilian followed a few meters behind. Like me, he was the son of a forest guard and therefore naturally knowledgeable about the forest. He moved lithely; he walked silently and expertly. Deeper and deeper into the pine forest we penetrated, on paths that our fathers' predecessors had trod. And because this Sarah was at that point the most beautiful but also the most standoffish stuffed animal I had ever met, I do not know how long Maximilian and I trod on eastward.

A sound, so terrible that I myself let out a cry, caused me to waken abruptly out of my musings.

Ten or so meters ahead, to the right of the path, was a wounded stuffed animal, a badger, and he was whimpering
as though he had already landed in hell. His entire body was torn, and in some places the tears were so large that I could see the cotton inside, despite the fact that I was standing some distance away. He had heard us coming, and his whimpering was in reality a cry for help.

I stopped where I was and simply stared. I was young and inexperienced, and what I felt was fear. My impulse was to turn around and run away. I am being brutally frank, but that is the least you have the right to expect of me. I was simply scared to death.

As I stood there, considering this cowardly retreat, Maximilian forced his way past me on the narrow path and hurried over to the badger. I was astounded to say the least, because I had managed to forget that Maximilian was even there.

Before I could say or do anything, he turned around and said, “Water. The badger must have water.”

Then I heard. The moanings that the dirty, torn stuffed animal was forcing out were unhesitating variations on this very word: “Water.”

In Maximilian's eyes was a force I had never seen before, and that made me even more confused.

I looked around. How far had we really gone? The forest around us consisted mostly of fir trees, and it was difficult to glimpse the sky between the dense treetops. To my surprise I realized that the sun had already started to go down, which meant that we must have wandered for more than two hours due east. There was no water here.

I shook my head.

“There's no water here,” I replied stupidly. “What's happened to him?”

I asked as if Maximilian were an interpreter between me and the badger. Maximilian did not seem to have heard what I said.

“He needs water,” he repeated. “Help out.”

Maximilian went over to the badger, taking one of his arms and putting it around his own neck. I hurried over and did the same thing, on the other side. The badger was hanging between us as if we intended to dry him in the wind.

“That way,” said Maximilian.

Afterward I wondered why I didn't react, why I didn't refuse. It would have been natural, I knew the forests better than Maximilian—there was no water in the direction in which he wanted to go. But I kept silent and, without asking, did as I had been told.

We walked quickly, with the badger between us. He was no longer mumbling; he had used the little strength he had, and I doubted that he was even conscious. The fear had not released its hold on me, and perhaps that was why I simply continued to walk. I had no idea where we were going.

 

No one knows how
far east the mountain range that we call Pal extends. No one has gone to its end and come back again. What is no more than a hill within Lanceheim becomes a ridge at the city limits and first forms what might be called a small mountain a few hundred meters south of Das Vorschutz. Twenty or thirty kilometers into the forest, the mountain rises so high that it takes a whole day of climbing to make it over to the other side.

Together Maximilian and I hauled the badger straight toward the mountain. My mental recollection was that the cliffs at the pine forest rose both abruptly and steeply, but because Maximilian seemed so single-minded, I thought perhaps there was a crevice, a ravine that I did not know about. And what if there was also a mountain spring, a natural well that I had not heard about? We were walking at a rapid pace. The badger hanging between us rattled unpleas
antly when he breathed, and even worse, this rattling was coming at longer and longer intervals.

Soon I saw the cliffs. And just as I thought, the mountain rose like a wall before us. It was impossible to climb. Despite the fact that Maximilian must have seen this too, he did not slow his pace. On the contrary, he seemed to walk a little faster, as if now he was in the vicinity of where he wanted to go.

“Shut your eyes,” he said.

We were walking quickly alongside each other. I was starting to get a little tired; I have never been an athlete. I tried to protest.

“Shut your eyes,” he repeated, still without reducing speed.

Once again I did as he asked me. He was seven years old, I was seventeen, and I obeyed him. Soon this would prove to be the least remarkable thing about this late afternoon.

I closed my eyes. When I could no longer see, my other senses were sharpened. I felt the weight of the badger's arm around my neck much more clearly, heard the pine needles that crunched under my shoes, the wind that whispered in the branches of the trees, and felt the gentle breeze against my whiskers.

Then it suddenly got cold. First around my face, then around my whole body. It was a very tangible, physical experience, and involuntarily I opened my eyes. This happened at approximately the same time as the sounds of the forest abruptly disappeared, as if someone had hastily turned nature's volume control down to zero.

The shock was…I cannot describe it.

I stopped, blinked, my jaw dropped, and I was not capable of intellectually comprehending what was obviously a fact.

We were inside the mountain.

Before me was a type of deep, high grotto where a brook
was purling by our shoes. From above, daylight forced its way in as finely sliced sunbeams through what must be cracks in the stone. Maximilian hauled the badger down to the water vein while I remained standing.

I closed my eyes, opened them again—nothing was changed. I turned around. There was no opening, no entrance, only thousands-year-old rock. And deep inside I knew what had happened without daring to admit it.

The badger, Maximilian, and I had passed through the ancient, solid rock as if it had been air. Our molecules had been dissolved and put together again during the course of a few seconds. Or else it was the mountain that dissolved before us. That didn't matter. What had happened was impossible, yet I was standing there.

The badger lay on the floor of the grotto and drank directly from the clear mountain brook. Maximilian sat alongside, holding him by the shoulders. I observed them a while without seeing them, and then turned around again and searched for the opening in the rock.

I knew there wasn't one, but I was still compelled to look.

And the impossible would happen again, when we left the grotto after an hour. By then, the badger had recovered to the point that he could walk by himself. Maximilian asked us to hold his paws, and after that he told us to close our eyes. We did so.

This time the chill that embraced me for a few, to be truthful, unpleasant moments was even more ghastly, and the relief when I again felt the breeze against my ears was enormous. I did not dare look at either the badger or Maximilian when I withdrew my paw and continued walking.

We returned to Das Vorschutz; it took a little more than an hour, and I went directly home and up to my room. I did not want to see or talk with anyone. Obviously I did not say
what I had been involved in, for the reason that my reader will very well understand. Who would believe me?

I never did find out who the badger was and what he was doing out in the forest, but the wound on his body was due to an encounter with a forest animal, a fox.

I myself had witnessed a miracle.